Friday, January 4, 2013

Logic ain't in it

I rarely write about the whole climate change shenanigans, leaving that to people who know a great deal more on the subject. However, my attention was caught by this piece on EurActiv. It is entitled Scientists link global warming to England’s rainiest year on record, which means nothing as every year is the most something on record and articles of this kind never seem to tell you exactly what they mean by "since records began". (1910, in case you are interested, which is not all that long ago.)

Interestingly enough, when it comes to the UK as a whole, this summer was the second wettest on record, which just proves that you can produce figures to prove anything at all, if you are so inclined.

Going on, we get the usual mish-mash of evidence and argument:

But four of the UK’s Top Five wettest years have now occurred since 2000, a statistic in line with the expectations of climatologists who model the effects of a warming world.

“It is not just Britain but many other parts of northern Europe and north America that are getting wetter and there is a climate change component to it,” Kevin Trenberth told EurActiv over a phone line from the US National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado.

Trenberth has won several awards for his scientific research, including the Nobel Peace Prize which he was co-awarded in 2007 for his work as lead author on the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)’s fourth risk assessment report.

“The overall pattern has been that middle to high latitudes [have] an increase in precipitation that goes with a warming climate, and the fact that the air can hold more moisture so the hydrological cycle speeds up,” he said.

Setting aside the various scandals that surround the IPCC, ably covered over the years by the Boss on EUReferendum (too numerous to link to), James Delingpole and many others, there is one little problem: I distinctly recall many highly expensively mounted warnings that because of climate change we were going to have a drought in 2012. Instead, we got the rainiest year (sort of) since records began.

UPDATE: A splendid and vituperative attack by James Delingpole on the Met Office that gets £200 million of our money every year. Are you listening Taxpayers' Alliance?

4 comments:

Actually, 10 years years ago we were continually assured that global warming, at least in northern Europe, would give wetter, warmer winters and hotter, drier summers. Leaving aside that the exceptionally cold winters of 2009-10 and 2010-11 clearly did not fit this model, in March last year we were as confidently assured that the exceptionally dry winter was wholly consistent with global warming. And now of course that the exceptionally wet summer and autumn were similarly consistent. Ergo, warmer, colder, wetter, drier, it's all global warming.

It is always worth pointing out that Trenberth did not win the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007 (any more than Michael Mann did)

Climate change is a constant and is never static for long. What causes it is dependent on very many variables a few known but most unknown. The consequences of climate change are equally devoid of knowns. Yet despite this some usually the most influential have made categorical statements about the causes and effects of climate change the result of which costly, wasteful, inefficient and half baked actions are being taken.